September 2, 2012

Takes two to tangle

I'll play devil's advocate and take a different position from every other I have seen so far today.

It's easy to pile on Romain Grosjean who received a very rare one race suspension penalty from the FIA for what happened at the start of the Belgian Grand Prix today. God knows the young frenchman has been involved in plenty of accidents this season. Australia, Malaysia, Monaco and Spa.

But take Monaco for example, Grosjean was hit by Alonso and then Schumacher, In Australia he was nurfed off the track by Maldonado, and in Malaysia he spun into Schumacher in the rain. He also had an unforced error in Hungary.

A one race suspension, really? Was Ralf Schumacher suspended in 2002 after his first brake zone flight? No.

Was Michael Schumacher suspended for crashing into the back of Senna in Spain? No, he was given a grid penalty.

Was Vettel suspended for spearing Button in 2010 at Spa? Was Hamilton suspended for blatantly slamming Madonado into the wall in Monaco last season or colliding with Massa every other race? Heck has Maldonado been suspended after all he managed to do this year?

The last driver actually suspended was Michael Schumacher in 1994 but for not obeying a black flag. (thanks @elenaF1). The last driver suspended for on track driving antics was Eddie Irvine for the crash in Brazil also in 1994.

So why pile on Grosjean, doesn't everyone love Gilles Villeneuve, don't you know how many times he crashed?

Of course it does not help that in one crash, at the most anticipated and favorite race of the season, Romain managed to take out the championship leader in a Ferrari along with Lewis Hamilton not to mention essentially wiping out the whole of the Sauber team. That's quite a mega screwing of the pooch but let's have a look at what happened.

Starting from behind Hamilton, Grosjean gets a much better start and is clearly ahead. He does move over aggressively on Lewis who in turn, and understandably, chooses not to move right, where he had some room, or lift. Hardly the first time a driver move over and squeezes another towards the grass.

Racing incident. Avoidable? OK, how about we institute point bys for racing thereby avoiding this sort of thing ever happening again.

Photo: SauberF1

The FIA needs to be more consistent with penalties not adjusting penalties based on who is involved, actively or otherwise. The motoring press would do better than to count an alternator failure on lap 40 as "and early race retirement" never mind what actually happened in the other four. A penalty for Grosjean? Sure but a suspension was too harsh.

The race itself was conditioned by that first turn accident but Mclaren and Jenson Button did a masterful job winning it on a one stopper. Vettel probably super happy to find himself in second after making most his passes before the final chicane rather than in the DRS zone.

Raikkonen, author of the race's best pass on Schumacher at Eau Rouge, maybe wishing Lotus could have that little extra that it seems to be missing in every race. In just one week, Monza.

52 comments:

Romain definitely deserved a penalty for causing the accident today but you have a very good point about consistency of penalties. If you look at the F1 twitter feeds today post race, lots of other people are discussing the same point.

Agreed, Romain did somethings stupid and deserved to get a penalty. Banned? No. I think five to ten place grid drop would do. Ultimately I think the penalty was so hard because of what happened, not what he did. Which really isn't fair.

To be honest, I'm more upset with Maldonado. Jumped the start (which can be seen as a contributing factor to the incident along with Kobayash's slow start) and dive bombing a back marker? He's collected a penalty for collisions or worse at almost every GP this year. Can we give him the ban instead?

I noticed the most rabid and hysterical "Kill Grosjean" articles are in the Italian and British press.... I'm guessing if he had just taken out a couple of Saubers and maybe a Force india he would be racing in Monza. :)

Completely agree. I think that Grosjean is the one to blame here, but the one race ban is a joke.Did you guys read the FIA press release? It says that one of the reasons for the penalty is that the accident “eliminated leading championship contenders from the race". Can you believe that? Is the FIA really saying that if Hulkenberg and Senna were in place of Hamilton and Alonso it would have been a different matter? That would be utter ridicolous...

its sad that grosjean got the penalty, and valid points are made, but accidents happen, and multiple factors are to play, so noone can really be blamed, and Alonso's exiting of the race shouldn't matter, everyone else should get a chance to fight back, as a matter of fact, alonso should be happy he is not dead and that he is still first? what is with the fussing and cussing, last time i remembered, this is F1, an event not for the faint of heart.. great article and comments!

This is the only incident where the actions of the guilty driver almost caused the decapitation of another driver. I think that's worthy of a more serious penalty as someone needs to be made an example of how dangerous moves like this can be. The severity of the outcome should play a part in the punishment.

Look at this picture: https://p.twimg.com/A1y6jp3CUAEZ-th.jpg

That's the direct result of Grosjean's lack of awareness. Maldonado and a few others have made similar initial errors of judgements and escaped without punishment because the outcomes weren't quite as serious.

AC - when I first saw this event - I could not help but be amazed that a simple lift by Hami would have kept everyone in the race. I guess it's more important to hold your turf in an impossible situation and prove you have brass balls than to stay in contention. Then again, I have long felt and seen Hami's poor ability to make strategic decisions properly during a race.

Frankly, RoGro seems to put himself into many spots where bad things happen. I recall Kobayashi getting a bit of a rap for aggressive moves that forced the other driver to "choose to crash" a while back. But he seems to have gotten past that point. Perhaps the issue is that RoGro is proving himself on the golden children of F1? (again your point I think).

Kevin- Lewis was in no way behind Grosjean. His front wing was level halfway up his sidepod and he was driven in to. You guys seriously need glasses. Lewis gets literally run in to and it's up to him to keep Grosjean from fucking up four cars? Really? Are you that delusional that you think that Lewis caused the accident because he didn't get out of the gas and prevent another driver from plowing into him? Have some objecticity dude. Lewis and everyone else was a victim of Grosjeans lack of awareness. And not for the first time this season.

Agreed with Kevin. In no way did Lewis contribute to the accident, besides when you're racing in Formula 1 and being paid millions a year to do it, your job is to keep your foot floored and not lift when someone's trying to take your position away. In the real world, it's called racing.

UhHuh - you said it - Lewis's front wing was halfway up grosjean's sidepod. Not saying RoGro's actions were good or justifiable, just that he was in front of Lewis. Hami would have totally repassed him later in the race, had he saved the car.

Perhaps my idea of racing is different in that I like to be around for the final lap.

You're wrong. The rules state that as soon as the front wing of the driver behind is alongside the rear wheels of the driver in front, the driver in front is required to leave on cars width to the edge of the track. Romain was required by the rules to leave one cars width of room since Lewis was alongside, Lewis had no obligation or reason to do anything other than maintain his line, and Romain caused a massive accident. Romain was 100% at fault. End of story, rules supporting it. All of you are simply wrong, I don't see why everyone keeps saying Lewis had an obligation to not get hit, or run in the grass to avoid it.

Alonso almost met his maker yesterday. If he had been just a little faster through that corner, we would be lamenting the loss of another racing legend.

Considering there are different stewards for each and every track, I'd take a guess that there is one of the reasons for the inconsistency. Maldonado has caused so many accidents this year, not quite as serious as Ro-Gro's, but I wouldn't put it past him to cause one eventually. I initially got upset when I read BBC's post of "Grosjean banned from F1," only to find it was only for one race inside the article. Hook line and sinker lol!

When he is getting passed in the field by somebody that could potentially win the race, they stay the hell back or away from him so they don't get tangled.

I love Ro-Gro. He is very enthusiastic about racing in F1, just look at his interviews. He is relatively the new guy in the field with one of the more competitive cars. He just needs to cool it on the starts.

A figurative "nose in the corner" is understandable as this could have badly injured somebody if not killed one of the drivers. But I feel there are other drivers that have been deserving of the same thing.

Am I the only one who remembered DC's nearly de-capitation in Melbourne in 2008 by Massa yesterday? What I can not remember is that Massa was given a penalty for that, except some David's commentaries with funny accent.So all of that "oh no he just missed Alonso, let's punish him!" is just some sort of hysteria, panic and theatrical "BEHOLD OF WHAT WE CAN DO" lame actions. I believe, some fans of Ye Olde Goode Ef-one'e will recognize this ban as "typical nowadays F1-boys' bureacracy", but the thing is - it was a racing incident. No one gets hurt. Things of that sort happens, when you give 24 little boys cars to race at high speeds.

GRO needed this penalty. For the most part, he is a well liked driver and for the most part people want to see him succeed. Next weekend all the cameras will be on him. People will grumble and want him back. This is the start of his reformation.

I don't want to see pastor come back. I dont want any second chances for him. I dont want to feel bad for him like I do for GRO.

The extreme low of a race ban followed by the extreme high of a race win this season. Sounds like a pretty good story to me.

How in the hell can anyone say that Lewis contributed to this in any way? Romain "I'm a dumbass with no spatial awareness" Grosjean rocketed across the completely clear track and drove straight into Lewis. Lewis was moving towards the white line on the right from the time he started moving to the time Grosjean ran his ass over. Lewis had no reason nor obligation to avoid getting hit by that idiot. There was more than enough room for Grosjean to maintain his line, Lewis as well, but as we've seen in the past races Grosjean is a fucking moron of epic proportions on race starts. Lewis did absolutely nothing wrong, the blame is all on that idiot Grosjean.

I don't have any love for Lewis at all, but I can't even begin to understand why you're giving me a "reference" AC. The perpetrator was clearly Grosjean. Even you can't spin this as Lewis' fault, he quite clearly was driven onto the grass and he has absolutely zero obligation to concede his position to someone that is a known maniac on race starts. I'm usually amused by your little witch hunts on Lewis, but blaming him forgetting hit is outrageous even for you.

I'm not "blaming Hamilton" I'm just not putting the whole blame on Grosjean. I'm sure you see on the video the touch nowhere near the grass, I'm sure you see how Grosjean was well ahead and Hamilton had a choice of moving a few inches to the right and lifting. I perfectly understand why he would not but hey, that's what happens when you race for position.

Your childish vendetta against Lewis Hamilton clouds your circumspect judgement. The rules state a drive must leave on cars width of room, his wheels were interlocked with Lewis' by the time Lewis has any indication he wasn't going to leave room, and there's literally nothing Lewis could do other than get crashed. You're simply wrong AC and I'm not going to continue to argue with a man that has such a childish obsession with denigrating victims. NO ONE in the Formula 1 paddock agrees with you that should've enough indication for you to see that you have zero objectivity in you and your opinion has no merit.

Would RoGro's penalty have been understood had someone been hurt or worse? Penalty's are there not to make life difficult for anyone, but as a deterrent for future incidents. You can be sure RoGro's gonna be much more careful now, and it would have made Maldonado think twice as well.

There's a lot of hate brewing here, but all angle's need to be thought about.

well, Hamilton could have backed out of it.i remember David Coulthard criticising kimi for beeing "a little bit to tentative" in a similar situation at the start in valencia.but kimi came home in second got a lot of points for ( it think it was ) second.

Romain happened to be the straw that broke the camels back so to speak the way I see it. It keeps happening with numerous drivers, as your examples show, and nothing is being done to fix it. IT STILL KEEPS HAPPENING. A suspension should scare everyone back to their brake pedals. If it happens again and no one is suspended or reprimanded equally then we know it was a knee jerk reaction to a common problem.

race ban does sound little bit harsh, but he doesn't seem to ave learn't anything from so many crashes some one has to stop ?? forget about other things... swerving during start ?? really ?? that too in one most accident prone corner during starts .... it worked in valencia which had long distance to first corner... even in monaco he did similar thing he swerved and found alonso like you said it takes 2 to tangle, problem is gro swerving. just coz he hit alonso or vice-versa doesn't mean alonso hit him.

I could not agree more with this post. Romain is considered a crasher quite unfairly. "So many crashes"? As stated in the post, he spun once alone, and once into Schumacher in the wet. Monaco 4 wide was not his fault. Nor being taken out by Maldonado. What other crashes are there?

Also, this was a racing incident. Penalty, yes. Upgrade to race ban? No. Much less for "it eliminated championship contenders from the race" (see it here http://twitpic.com/aqfad4)

Imposing or aggravating a penalty for that, states there are drivers that can't be taken out, and there are others that it's ok.